If you’ve followed my number one habit of highly successful people, saving money, then chances are you’re fairly wealthy. You put time on your side, and you compounded money. Explaining how you did it is hard. You just did. You put water in your Cheerios. You saved ‘til it hurt.
Now you’ve got a pile of money, and the stakes are high. You don’t have the time you did when you were younger. You can’t do it all over again. When we look back in time, we tend to put today’s self into that younger person. Our mind plays tricks on us. That person, with all of today’s wisdom, didn’t exist. We tend to give ourselves too much credit.
The habit of saving is not the same as the skill of investing.
Looking ahead, will you have the wisdom to be a seasoned, skilled investor? Saving money, accumulating assets, and working like a dog are not the qualities of a seasoned investor. They’re the habits of a saver. Wonderful habits, yet different than investing.
When you work with hundreds of investors and hundreds of millions of dollars, like Your Survival Guy does, you get a sense of what it takes to be a successful investor. To be a shepherd of savings through the skill of investing.
Because you worked so hard for what you have, it’s nearly impossible to take an unemotional approach to retirement investing. You don’t have a paycheck. Your number one habit— saving—is over. Now you’re spending. The experience you have as a retirement investor is similar to when you were just starting out as a saver. It’s scary.
And the person you are today will never have as much experience as who you will be tomorrow. Investing in the school of hard knocks is not an education I wish upon anyone.
Action Line: Stick with me, highly successful, fairly wealthy people. We’ll get through this.
